Rick Santorum's Primary Wins: 5 Issues Keeping Him in the Race

A perennially trailing Republican primary candidate, Rick Santorum exploded from behind Tuesday to strike an improbable trio of wins in a presidential preference primary in Missouri and caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado. The Philadelphia Inquirer put into blunt terms what so many other publications only danced around: Santorum has now won more election events (counting Iowa) than any other GOP candidate. The Christian Science Monitor suggests the polarization seen in a reviving culture war is behind the former Pennsylvania senator's surge. This -- beyond the explanation they offer that Romney just "didn't try that hard" -- makes the most sense here. Below are the five most viable news-pegs-cum-talking-points keeping Santorum alive at the polls. Hot button politics? Probably. Hot campaign strategy? Almost certainly.

1. Proposition 8: When the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals announced Tuesday that California's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, Santorum was quick to latch on to the issue. A legitimate judicial ruling against his politics allows him to latch on to a voter set who feel marginalized by a reverse persecution. Santorum went on the record at a campaign event Wednesday saying advocates of Prop. 8 and laws like it are viewed as "bigots" who "should be ostracized from the public square." However, he somehow didn't make it onto Vice Magazine's list of the Internet's Hottest Homophobes.
2. Religious Politics and Contraceptives: While some aspects of Santorum's politics alienate the Christian Right, such as his corporate belief structure, his antipathy toward birth control has won him points with many conservatives. President Barack Obama decided Wednesday to not limit a policy that mandates prescription contraceptive coverage by some religious-affiliated institutions. Santorum went as far earlier to write an op-ed distancing himself from these very politics, tying Mitt Romney to Obama in the same manner conservatives had in discussion of health care issues.
3. The Susan G. Komen Foundation Pulls Planned Parenthood Funding: The recent debacle with the Komen Foundation pulling funding from Planned Parenthood has allowed for issues of birth control to remain central to Santorum's campaign. Even as the public and a media firestorm helped to reverse the Komen foundation's decision to deny grants to the birth-control advocacy group, Santorum is able to propagate his demonizing rhetoric of abortions to continue inflaming the right. He and Newt Gingrich (Tuesday's biggest loser) both lambasted the foundation's reversal on politics. Santorum said: "It's unfortunate that political pressure is building to provide money to an organization that goes out and actively is the number one abortion provider in the country. That's not health care. That's not health care at all. Killing little children in the womb is not health care."
4. Mormons vs. Evangelicals: People in the Mormon faith have a complicated history of persecution. As they traveled from east to west in the 1800's, other religious groups consistently opposed them. That divide has not totally healed and religious analysts, particularly on the Mormon side, are still trying to ascertain the divide between these different Christian sects. Just as a matter of identity, Santorum is able to pull votes in from a voter base that inherits some degree of prejudice from an anti-Mormon evangelical past.
5. Newt's Skeletons: Along another polarity, the media's airing of Gingrich's divorces and dalliances has alienated any of the remaining religious base left undecided by these other issues. "It's great to be glib, but it's better to be principled," Santorum said ahead of the Florida primary in reference to Gingrich. He's hammered the family-values point home ad nauseam by now to swaying those not won over by the other factors.

If these issues fade from the public sphere, will Santorum be able to sustain his impressive series of wins against Romney and Gingrich? That only time can answer. But as long the contentious issues that Santorum feels at home discussing are still on the table, he may maintain a presence in the polls.